Month: March 2013

Fifty years ago this May, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opened a series of unprecedented hearings investigating the clandestine activities of foreign agents active in the United States. The investigation focused most intensively on the operatives and financing of key Israel lobbying organizations such as the American Zionist Council, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the American Section of the quasi-governmental Jerusalem-based Jewish Agency. Thanks to a secret memo only declassified in 2010, the public may now know what fears motivated the hearings.

The March 17, 1961 staff report expressed concerns that “indigenous groups based on racial or national origins have been organized in the United States, and have often concentrated on influencing United States foreign policy in directions designed primarily to promote the interests of other states.” The Senate was particularly – though not exclusively – concerned about Israel-coordinated overseas provocations intended to tripwire the United States into action. “Operation Susannah,” an all-but-forgotten 1954 Israeli false flag terror attack on U.S. facilities in Egypt designed to keep international forces stationed in the Suez Canal zone is mentioned twice as a reason for investigating “how they do it.” Although such a line of inquiry was clearly “explosive” the Senate proposal included having “testimony on the Lavon Affair, and similar ‘gray area’ activities.”

The Senate and a parallel Justice Department investigation uncovered a massive money-laundering scheme by which the Jewish Agency – using its access to Israeli government funding and tax exempt donations from the United States – illegally funneled tens of millions into public relations and lobbying efforts conducted by the top U.S. lobby – the American Zionist Council. Isaiah Kenen, the leader of the AZC’s unincorporated lobbying division called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee – also received Jewish Agency funding, laundered through his privately-owned lobbying newsletter.

Continue reading “1963: The year the Israel Lobby Transcended US Law”

According to an exclusive report from Daniel Klaidman at The Daily Beast, President Obama “is poised to sign off on a plan to shift the CIA’s lethal targeting program to the Defense Department.”

Officials anticipate a phased-in transition in which the CIA’s drone operations would be gradually shifted over to the military, a process that could take as little as a year. Others say it might take longer but would occur during President Obama’s second term. “You can’t just flip a switch, but it’s on a reasonably fast track,” says one U.S. official. During that time, CIA and DOD operators would begin to work more closely together to ensure a smooth hand-off. The CIA would remain involved in lethal targeting, at least on the intelligence side, but would not actually control the unmanned aerial vehicles.

One critical element of the drone war that made it so egregious was that it was a covert program run by a hyper-militarized CIA instead of the Defense Department, despite the fact that these are clearly military actions. Typically, when states shift the use of force into the realm of the secret services, it’s because the law doesn’t permit those actions (even in a legal system that grants special powers to states that would never be afforded to individuals). With the drone war run by the CIA, as Klaidman writes, “it is not only highly classified, it’s deniable under the law. That means the CIA, in theory, can lie about the existence of the program or about particular operations.”

Importantly, a federal appeals court ruled last week that the CIA cannot continue to “neither confirm nor deny” the existence of the drone war, in a court case prompted by a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union. For years, the modus operandi has been for the drone war to be the world’s worst kept secret. That way the Obama administration gets the credit for being “tough on terror,” while reserving the right to disregard probing questions or inquiries.

In addition, a high level United Nations investigator last week said the drone war in Pakistan technically violates the law because it is conducted without the express consent of Islamabad, therefore a breach of Pakistani sovereignty. The UN envoy, Ben Emmerson, is leading an investigation into the drone war’s compliance with international law and international human rights law.

Add to this Rand Paul’s attention-grabbing anti-drone filibuster earlier this month and the increased public debate about drones and you end up with a significant amount of pressure on the Obama administration compared to the proverbial blank check it has received since 2009. That pressure might explain this leak to The Daily Beast. The administration is performing “damage control,” almost as if to say ‘Yeah, we know this is illegal and inhumane and starting to piss a lot of people off, but we’re working on it.’

That said, this news should be taken with a grain of salt. The Defense Department currently does control and conduct entire portions of the drone war. And shifting its entirety to the DoD doesn’t necessarily translate to greater transparency and accountability the way it does in theory. “The military’s targeted killing program,” as Klaidman puts it “is ‘clandestine’—which means it is secret but not deniable.”

Small potatoes, right? The administration will still have a drone program, it will still maintain ‘kill lists,’ it will continue to define the entire world as the battlefield and to define away any real meaning of imminence and thus any real legal restrictions on its actions. Even Klaidman readily acknowledges:

It is a curious phenomenon that misery, death and widespread destruction of property is mourned when it comes as the result of a natural disaster, or at the hands of a tyrannical foreign government, yet is callously disregarded when undertaken as part of the military pursuits of the United States government. Humanitarian aid and relief efforts so prominent in the wake of events like Hurricane Katrina or genocide in Darfur are not even an afterthought in response to millions of displaced Iraqis or sick and starving Iranians. To the contrary, these occasions of mass human suffering are cheered and celebrated as victories by the large majority of Americans, to the extent they are even aware of them.

One need only look to mainstream news outlets for further evidence of this moral decay. Horrible conditions that would be daily front-page headlines were they the result of an earthquake are easily ignored when they are caused by our government. What is it that exists in the psyche of a population that allows the bulk of its inhabitants to turn a blind eye to these conditions so long as they are taking place in far off lands and done as part of government sanctioned war strategy?

One of the few people to publicly challenge this mindset is Ron Paul. Paul has attempted to teach Americans about a foreign policy based on the Golden Rule–that one should treat others as he would like others to treat him. Paul has used the hypothetical scenario of Chinese troops patrolling the streets of Texas under the auspices of "safety", "promoting democracy", and "protecting strategic interests". What, he asks, would Americans do in response to such a Chinese occupation? Although this kind of talk regularly elicits criticism from Republican and Democratic audiences alike, Paul says that many have expressed that this part of his message has been more enlightening than any other.

While it is important to look at American foreign policy through the eyes of non-Americans, it is even more important to look at such state action abroad in the same light as individual action. In his essay, War, Peace, and the State, Murray Rothbard does just that, applying the same principles to war as would be applied to two feuding individuals. In doing so, he deals the state a devastating blow. Rothbard begins by stating the obvious–that it is perfectly just for an individual, Jones, finding that he or his property is being attacked by Smith, to employ self-defense against Smith. Everyone would agree, however, that Jones would not be justified in using violence against innocent third parties in attempting to catch Smith. For instance, if Jones’s valuables are being stolen by Smith, he has every right to use force to attempt to repel or catch Smith, but he does not have the right to repel or catch Smith by indiscriminately spraying machine gun fire into a crowded shopping mall where Smith hides. Doing so would clearly make Jones as much a criminal aggressor as Smith.

Continue reading “Viewing State Action the Same as Individual Action”